A match made in heaven?

Waynesville Mayor Gavin Brown has honed his dating and engagement analogies as town leaders weigh whether to tie the knot with Lake Junaluska.

They started innocently enough 10 months ago.

“All we are doing now is talking on the phone and holding hands,” Brown said last summer, when the so-called courtship began.

But the discourse has grown downright steamy recently.

If Waynesville and Lake Junaluska decide to get hitched, state lawmakers must consecrate the union. And with a mid-March legislative deadline bearing down to get a bill introduced in Raleigh, town leaders decided it was high time to start writing the vows.

“We need to at least reserve a wedding chapel,” Brown said two weeks ago.

Brown, for one, seems smitten and doesn’t want to look back at Junaluska as the one that got away.

Before Lake Junaluska can promise its hand, however, it needs the blessing of its extended family: a task force, a community council and board of directors to be exact.

But the clock is ticking. A do-or-die date to file for the necessary legislation with Raleigh lawmakers is just two weeks away. So Waynesville leaders were expected to take the plunge this week — even though Lake Junaluska hasn’t officially spoken up on the subject of its own betrothal.

“We may have to ask their hand in marriage before they say they want to get married,” Brown said.

“To use the mayor’s analogy of marriage, no marriage works unless both parties spend a lot of time and effort making it work, and that’s what we’ll need to do for this union,” said Pat Mayer, a Waynesville resident who has lived both in town and at Lake Junaluska over the years.

Mayer then offered her opinion as matchmaker.

“I want to say to Lake Junaluska, ‘Waynesville is a unique place to live and call home.’ I want to say Waynesville, ‘Lake Junaluska has a great deal to offer this town,’” Mayer said.

Indeed, the mutual admiration was flowing last week as leaders from the two entities came to the table for a series of prenuptial talks.

“Whatever comes of this we want you to know how grateful we are for this partnership we have been in, not only in the past but right now as we explore this opportunity,” Jack Ewing, the CEO of Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, told town leaders at a recent meeting.

The feeling is reciprocal, according to longtime former Waynesville Mayor Henry Foy.

“I want (Lake Junaluska) to know how much we appreciate them and how much they have meant to Waynesville,” Foy told Ewing in response.

Waynesville leaders believe Lake Junaluska would be a good catch.

“It will be a win-win for both communities,” Waynesville Town Manager Marcy Onieal said.

Ewing, not wanting to speak out of turn before his extended family formally offers Junaluska’s hand, would only say that Lake Junaluska leaders are taking “a serious look at the possibility.”

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…